The House of Government

Posted on 19 May 2017 by Yuri Slezkine

The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment Written in the tradition of Tolstoy s War and Peace, Grossman s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin s purges A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union.Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 550 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths.Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared. Best Read The House of Government author Yuri Slezkine For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr The Omphalos on the Moscva Like Simon Sebag Montefiore s Jerusalem, The House of Government uses a limited geography as a focus to narrate an almost unlimited cultural history This is the history of what can be called eschatological faith, the belief that the race of Homo Sapiens is destined toward a definite and definable end point The two works narrate different strands of the same history, each with a distinctive virtuosity.It is a common trope among Christian apologists that the modern Wes The Omphalos on the Moscva Like Simon Sebag Montefiore s Jerusalem, The House of Government uses a limited geography as a focus to narrate an almost unlimited cultural history This is the history of what can be called eschatological faith, the belief that the race of Homo Sapiens is destined toward a definite and definable end point The two works narrate different strands of the same history, each with a distinctive virtuosity.It is a common trope among Christian apologists that the modern Western wor...It is truly a rare time when I will admit defeat and label a book as DNF did not finish However, after completing 22% of this piece, I have decided that I cannot continue, lacking the ability to affix sufficient attention to the narration or glean much of the author s message Some of this surely lays at my own feet, but as many have said on Goodreads, life is too short to be burdened with a book that leaves you feeling miserable as yo...This is a work of history Any resemblance to fictional characters, dead or alive, is entirely coincidental This is a monumental, long and detailed book that is both a history of the Russian revolution, a personal reflection on the literature it produced and a collection of family stories centred on a large apartment building known as the House of Government, which was built in the early 1930s to house the elite class of the Bolshevik regime Slezkine s other central theme is that the ...This titanic volume contains the topics and organization of several books One is a social history of the residents of a single apartment building the House of Government, on Balchug Island in the Moskva River This building was one of the prides of the early Soviet Union, replete with all of the luxuries of modern architectural engineering a day care, electricity, central heating, restaurants, wide rooms It was a symbol of promise for its inhabitants, a glimmer of what a new society would This titanic volume contains the topics and organization of several books One is a social history of the residents of a single apartment building the House of Government, on Balchug Island in the Moskva River This building was one of the prides of the early Soviet Union, replete with all of the luxuries of modern architectural engineering a day care, electricity, central heating, restaurants, wide rooms It was a symbol of promise for its inhabitants, a glimmer of what a new society would entail It details their family relationships, their aspirations and lives, their appreciation of art and literature There are so many characters, it is almost impossible to keep track of them all Slezkine has tracked perhaps every single inhabitant of this building, and talk...So how to rate this As a piece of archival and documentary research, this is monumental and undoubtedly worthy of 5 stars But it s less convincing to me as an academic thesis which seeks to offer millennial religious cults as an analytical model to make sense of the Russian Revolution 3 stars And for m...Absolutely stunning I thought this book was about an apartment building constructed for high Soviet officials The House of Government , the people who lived there, and their fates during the purges of the 1930 s and 40 s But it is so muchthan that This book is not for the faint hearted, or someone looking for a quick read It is an 1100 page tome, a detailed account of the Russian Revolution led by the Bolsheviks how it began, the lives and beliefs of the people who ran the revolutio Absolutely stunning I thought this book was about an apartment building constructed for high Soviet officials The House of Government , the people who lived there, and their fates during the purges of the 1930 s and 40 s But it is so muchthan that This book is not for the faint hearted, or someone looking for a quick read It is an 1100 page tome, a detailed account of the Russian Revolution led by the Bolsheviks how it began, the lives and beliefs of the peop...My relationship to this book is complicated Like a 1st date, it shows up charming as can be After a few weeks, skeletons begin to tumble out of the closet revealing a few structural flaws Those first few pages were exquisite, the details are profound and resonating The writing style reminds me of someone trying to recall strong memories of days long past in an attempt they will be preserved These early chapters describe street scenes and scents in suc...Absolutely stunning piece of non fiction that is hard to find nowadays Found it by pure chance and now I believe it to be one of the best books on the revolution A real jewel The book is truly terrifying it describes the lives the revolutionaries, t...A massively researched exploration of the Russian revolution from pre 1917 through Stalins s terror, searching for the source of the true believer commitment of the early Bolshevists and the reasons it didn t survive their generation Slezkine doesn t believe you ll be convinced by one example, so he turns a fire hose of evidence on you at every turn And a fire hose of convoluted prose I listen...This is a great book that will I am sure come to be seen as a classic Words like epic are thrown around too easily sometimes but are appropriate here We are rapidly approaching the 100 year anniversary of the October Revolution and this is a fine book to read about it Yuri Slezkine has written a history of the Russian Revolution focused on the time up until 1941 but also embracing its ultimate failure in the 1990s The book is on the surface a history of a building known as the House of This is a great book that will I am sure come to be seen as a classic Words like epic are thrown around too easily sometimes but are appropriate here We are rapidly approaching the 100 year anniversary of the October Revolution and this is a fine book to read about it Yuri Slezkine has written a history of the Russian Revolution focused on the time up until 1941 but also embracing its ultimate failure in the 1990s The book is on the surface a history of a building known as the House of Government that was built to house the key members of the Soviet bureaucracy or nomenklatura Slezkine has obtained access to a vast set of biographies, autobiograph...

19 May 2017

Yuri Slezkine